Before summer comes to an end and we must return to school, I figured it was time to cross something off the to-do list. While investigating the void outside the library I decided to roam the stacks and found something that should help.

A 400-page textbook that was caked in dust and likely assumed missing from circulation for years now. Ghosts From Our Past was prominently written as the title against a nebula background. (Better than most with stock images of co-eds or animals.) The tagline of "Both literally and figuratively" gained a smile.

My fingers flipped through the book kicking up dust. Most books on the paranormal are mythology collections. Each with their own grains of truth mixed into the prose like Carrie's "How To Summon A Fairy" book. This tome, however, was filled with equations, quantum theory, and equipment specification.

I must have spent an hour in that corner of the library reading things like, "paranormal phenomena breaks natural laws. Take ghosts, for instance, they are said to appear out of thin air apparently violating the law of conservation of mass [...] You know what else breaks the laws of the natural world? Quantum mechanics. Many of the laws governing the smallest particles run contrary to the laws governing the micro-world. Scientists have even gone as far to describe the behavior of these particles "spooky." Yet, quantum theory is accepted mainstream physics. While similarly spooky natural law-breaking paranormal phenomena is left off as a joke by conventionalists."

As a member of academia and what this textbook would also likely describe as "paranormal phenomena", I thought they were onto something so I checked out the book to solve the early mysteries of this series. Such as, what is hunting our kitchen?

I haven't written about it since our first post, mostly because activity hadn't increased until Ezra started dating the two of us. Although I doubt the ghost is annoyed at our non-traditional values. It's likely caused by non-parahuman activity being a catalyst.

For example, our kitchen has been getting colder despite sun trying to sneak in all day long. I quite enjoy it, but the sun-loving types in the house are finding it a bit strange. Creaks have been all but ignored due to the age of the house, but now our fridge is chiming in with a dripping sound, but when we open it, nothing.

I would have excused it all like I had when my suspicions were first raised, but one afternoon when Ezra was making coffee he spilled the grounds on the counter. He turned to grab something to clean it up and when he turned back a pattern was drawn.

Ezra was too weirded out to guess what the odd shape was but Carrie's tea reading habits gave it a go. It was segmented with a hexagon and a pentagon shape stuck together. The right only had one line parted in the spilled grounds while the left side had several. Almost from every point, some seemed to even have two lines from a single corner.

"I think it's an ant?" Carrie offered.

"Whatever it is," Ezra mumbled, "I don't like it."

I pressed my lips together with a growing doubt. Why would a spirit of any sort need to draw an ant? Surely, hi or boo would get a message across. If it had been me, I would have assumed someone had been playing a joke, but since both Carrie and I were in the living room at the time Ezra wasn't granted that luxury.

Armed with my new book, I flipped to the Preparing for the Metaphysical Examination section. It claims that houses are the most haunted place, but not dorms. They are "haunted only by hairspray and bad decisions." I'll agree if we are counting abuse culture under bad decisions. (Which I do.)

Interacting with "our world" definitely makes this ghost more than accidentally glimpsing dark energy. But what it wanted, or really anything besides the fact that it didn't say hello was still unknown.

I read Carrie what the book said about the dangerous of conjuring and the damage to the barrier that resulted in the process. That any interaction with it may rip that fabric. She did not take these warnings to heart and cited that weaving with the intangible is what witches do. I flipped through the giant book twice and didn't find anything counting her argument. There was brief talk about mediums, shamans, and necromancers, but no kitchen witches.

With the "Don't try this at home" warning ignored, we continued on. Well, Carrie and I did. Ezra sat nervously behind us with the dog in his lap for I'm assuming shared moral support. I considered to just tell Ezra to ignore whatever was haunting our kitchen, but when we got to the Spectral Field Theory section showing what the authors believed was the missing methodology the pages were ripped out. The vandal was likely the one who had misshelved this book in the first place. My heartbreak over the damage of public property only caused me to encourage Carrie who brought out her book of shadows to remedy this situation.

I'd love to cosmically add to the balance and share secrets with you to make up for the cruel joke of this book's missing pages, veil be damned, but you see with Carrie's magic is an artform. She doesn't just find a ritual that claims to work, she has to feel the spell like an emotional reaction one might have when looking at a Monet. Therefore, to the chagrin of the scientists who wrote this book, results are not universally reproducible in lab settings.

To be fair, there were pages and pages of "spectral orbs" which might be dust in the air so maybe their methods might not have been reproducible either. As Carrie and I debated methods to find the right one, Ezra googled and found "Is It a Ghost? A Handy Quiz".

At the intersection of google and witchcraft that is our kitchen, we summoned a ghost. It was wispy with a form, just not a completely clear one. The edges were far more defined than the eyes. which were as hollow as peepholes.

The quiz, instantly useless was swapped for a guide. Sentience? Check. Human form? Ish. Intelligence? Who knew. Malevolence? Hopefully low.

I'd love to tell you it was a terrifying thing. But, we did invite it here, and judgment on our part would have been cruel. It was however, a curious sight. It floated over our kitchen's island. Looking away felt like it would trigger the being to react, but my eyes were instinctively drawn towards a mug that was already moving on its own towards us.

First the beans, then the mug? I flipped through the book again and saw a chemical formula. "It wasn't an ant at all," I said as I glanced up from the book. "They want coffee."

"What?" Ezra said under his breath.

"The symbol. It was a caffeine molecule."

It took a few beats of everyone's heart, besides the ghost's I suppose, for Carrie to google confirmation. "Holy shit, it is."

Theory proven, I inched over to the coffee machine and started questioning the trend of K-Cups over traditionally having a single large pot. Hopefully a cup at a time would be acceptable. The ghost turned with me as it hovered and stared in that unnerving way that old photographs do.

I thought immortality would end before that first cup was brewed. Carrie is the one who usually does offerings, but I felt more comfortable doing it this time. Since asking if creamer was needed felt somehow too strange I just set the mug down.

The ghost moved to hover over the mug, and the steam pulled up unnaturally fast. At first U thought only the heat was stolen, but when I ventured a look, the coffee was vanishing as if it all turned into steam.

"This might take a while."

Our mug tree has several mugs and it took a rotation of every last one to meet the craving of a creature who was stuck in our kitchen and in need of a caffeine fix.

I hear caffeine can make you shaky, but the frequency the ghost started vibrating was more than that. Or maybe, it was exactly that. Quantum theory suggested that if you could only hit the right note you could pass your hand through anything. Which is actually what the ghost did as it phased through the room in every direction at once.

I used to think the world was predictable. If you see enough of it, learn enough history, you'll notice patterns. But a ghost needing coffee, not as a final meal, but as a scientific endeavor, shows that the world is simply not going to allow us to predict it.

Maybe we should fight, like nothing is a given.